Friday 8 December 2006

My First Microsoft Product Launch

So being an IT guy, and my company going the Windows Way whole hog; I decided it was about time I went to one of these fabled Microsoft product launches where you get heaps of swag from booth babes and free beer and steak, and ... and...

Well that is just a load of crap, but I had a decent time anyway :)

While Microsoft and their partners still practice the "meat-grinder" sales technique (keep shoving the product down your throat until the money flows out the other end), the IT Pro track presenters had a sense of humor about it, and were able to laugh at themselves when things didn't go as expected onstage. One guy furiously typing on 4 different demo machines, the other "stretching" the talk so we wouldn't get bored and rowdy.

The keynote was the same drab "rah-rah" cheerleading I've come to expect from almost every keynote presentation. KEY MESSAGE: "This will be good for your bottom line, folks. Trust us, we're sure..."

The actual demo sessions were informative and even slightly eye-opening, the whole Vista/Office2007/Exchange2007 package looks pretty impressive overall. I was most impressed with the Business Desktop Deployment Workbench demo. Building a single operating system image to be deployed in a number of different manners including DVD, from an SMS server, directly from the workbench server, and others. The language options are pretty impressive too; Vista is no longer base-language dependent, but can be deployed with as many or as few "language packs" as you wish which can be applied very simply after the fact. That will make a lot of Quebec IT people happy. Most IT folks I know despise working in a "translated" environment like the French Canadian WindowsXP, but prefer the language of origin, US English. The users they support, however, have their own preferences of course :)

Lunch was a decent box including sandwich, chips, salad, cheese and crackers, a tiramisu cake, and an apple. Not steak and beer, but pretty decent for free :)

No "booth babes" although there were some attractive ladies in evidence.

And I got a T-shirt.

All in all, a pretty good day.

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